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Oilers sweep Goldpanners in doubleheader

The Peninsula Oilers continued their strong start by sweeping the Alaska Goldpanners of Fairbanks in a doubleheader Thursday at Coral Seymour Memorial Park in Alaska Baseball League play.Under surprisingly sunny skies, the Oilers shut out the Goldpanners 6-0 in the first game, and rallied back from an early deficit to win the second game 3-1. The Oilers are 3-0 in the league and 5-0 overall.In the first game, the Oilers broke open the scoring with a three-run triple from Nate Ring in the bottom of the second inning. Jimmie Koch, Alex Staehely and Nigel Nootbaar all scored runs from that hit.In the third inning, Trey Richardson smacked a homer over the fence to score two more runs, with Jeff Yamaguchi coming home as well, and the Oilers held a commanding 5-0 lead.Josh Miller finished off the scoring with a double in the sixth inning that brought Riley Heinzer across the plate.Richardson ended up batting 1 for 3 with the home run and two RBI, and Ring ended up 1 for 3 with the triple and three RBI.Brandon Kizer pitched five innings for the Oilers and recorded two hits and four strikeouts, and Logan McAnallen pitched the last two with two hits and two strikeouts.“We have a really good pitching staff and this field plays into our pitching strengths, so we’re not as good offensively as last year but we’re a scrappy team and all we need to do is put a few runs up there and it works out,” Ring said. “We’re just clicking right now.”Head coach John Stevens said Kizer played a crucial role in the win.“After the first inning, he was kind of slow, but then he turned it on, and we managed to get a decent lead,” Stevens said. “This ballpark, when you get a three- or four-run lead, it’s hard to come back, so the bullpen has done an excellent job of shutting things down, and we were able to get a couple of key hits.”In the second game, the Goldpanners scored early, as leadoff hitter Brady Renner hit a sacrifice fly in the top of the third inning to allow Alex Schmidt to score.Ring scored off a sacrifice fly from Miller in the bottom of the sixth to even the score at one apiece, as he was just able to touch home base, sneaking by the catcher.With two outs in the sixth, Yamaguchi, Richardson and Koch managed to load the bases, which brought Staehely to bat. “We just needed a little spark there, our offense wasn’t working in the first couple innings, and our pitcher wasn’t too bad, but we needed a couple innings to get acclimated to the game,” Ring said.A wild pitch from Fairbanks’ Drew Mitrisin caused catcher Kurt Schlangen to lose the handle on the ball, and allowed Yamaguchi to score the tiebreaking run, and when Schlangen threw to Mitrisin at home to prevent a second run, the throw went astray and Richardson added his run.“It’s difficult to win doubleheaders, and they came out a little sluggish, so we needed to catch some breaks,” Stevens said. Yamaguchi hit 1 for 2 with the one run, while Ring sported identical stats.J.D. Salles was the winning pitcher, as he pitched 4 1-3 innings with four hits allowed and five strikeouts.The Oilers face the Goldpanners once more on Friday evening at 7 p.m. at Coral Seymour Park, and Stevens said the early wins can never be taken for granted.“In baseball, wins in April are just as important as wins in August and September, so these wins might cover for games that we let slip away later in the year,” he said.